Ending Level 3 now, with half the field headed for a bit of dinner. The chip counts in the Headline box above have been updated with our most recent count.

Level 2 was a rough one for Team Blog as we struggled with a mighty content publishing beast. At this point, it appears we may have won the battle, if not the war. We continued to report during our struggles however. Here are a few notes from around the floor.

Mikael Westerlund, 2005 PCA and Scandinavian Open final table player, made an early exit with pocket jacks all in vs. pocket kings. Marcus Golser is out after getting short and running AQ into pocket aces. Golder at one time sat at the designated Table of Death which also featured Christian Ulriksen, Greg Raymer, and Rob Hollink.

Golser, pre-exit


FossilMan

Now, for a bit of news from our roving reporters, Ed and Andrew.

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We have had a couple of well known fallers at the 2nd fence. Both Carlo Citrone and Roland de Wolfe appear to have been eliminated. Carlos Mortensen is still in but had just been moved tables and was hence missed in the chip counts. He is sitting at around 7K.

Katja Thater and her fiance Jan were drawn at the same table and both seem to be doing fairly well. They are around the 18K mark and Jan took down a 4K pot whilst I passed. On a board of Ah-3d-10d we had a bet of 500, the next player raised to 1200 total and Jan after a pretty long think bumped it to 3K total. The original bettor got out the action and after flashing his cards at Jan as did the second.


Katja Thater

5 limpers including TheBeat, Johnny Lodden and Noah Boeken see a flop of Kh-10d-8s and all of them check. The turn bringis 9c and an unknown bets 500. Lodden is the only caller. Another 9 on the river and a 1K bet from Johnny takes it down. He now has around 17K.

An UTG raise to 300 folded round to Katja Thater who bumps it to 800 and gets a call. The flop is Ah-4s-3d and a 1100 bet from Katja wins it there and then. She is up to around 16K after that.

Internet player ActionJeff is showing he can excel in a live game as well. With a pot of 4K and a flop of 6c-Qh-8c he bets out 4,500 and his opponent folds. This pot takes ActionJeff to close to the 30K mark.

Martin Wendt was eliminated by a Jacks full of twos fullhouse.

There are a lot of big players on PokerStars, but this year BigJoe2003 is at the top of the pile. Leading the race to be the first player to hit SuperNova Elite, he's certainly been putting in the hands. Chris Moneymaker is now better aquainted with him too, after a raise and a reraise preflop saw BigJoe2003 pushing all-in with a pot sized bet on the QQ2 flop. Chris didn’t have to think long before calling with his Aces. BigJoe2003 sighed and... turned over two Aces of his own. BigJoe2003 remains on around 15k, Chris is looking for some chips with 8k of his original stack remaining.

Luca Pagano is still battling a fairly shortstack. On a flop of 6d-5s-5h he bet out 750. This was raised to 1650 and Luca announced all-in for approx 6K total. The other player folded and Luca's stack move up to around 9K.


Luca Pagano

Josh Arieh is the kind of guy who plays a lot of pots, and it's no surprise to find him with a couple of precarious stacks of the smaller denomination chips to go with his high-value purples and blues. Typical Josh Arieh: Seat 4 raises, Josh (Seat 5) reraises, they see the Ac Kd 5c flop. Seat 4 check calls Josh's flop bet, and both check the As turn. When the river comes the Queen of spades and Seat 4 bets, Josh decides he can win the hand and his reraise proves him correct. Seat 4 doesn't seem too thrilled to see Josh’s KJ, but Josh is happy seeing how tall a building he can construct. A lot of his 22k is is made up of 25s and 100s.